A wireless router that tracks user activity—but for a good reason

Routers upload data to the cloud with goal of making everyone's network faster.

Over the past year we've watched in dismay as more and more devices require cloud service accounts to unlock their full potential. Cisco made its routers worse with a software update that forced users onto a cloud service with less functionality than the traditional management interface, and then Razer required Internet connections in order to use all the capabilities of a gaming mouse.

It's not that cloud services are inherently bad—many are extraordinarily useful. The issue is that physical devices that always worked just fine without an Internet connection shouldn't require users to upload data to some vendor's servers and create a new username and password unless there's a good reason for it.

Along came a new example today, but one that may well turn out to be good for users—even those who want to keep all their data completely out of anyone's cloud. Wireless chip maker Qualcomm Atheros today unveiled StreamBoost, which intelligently manages your home's broadband connection on routers based on Qualcomm's 802.11ac technology.

StreamBoost stops devices and applications from hogging more bandwidth than they need, preventing slowdown for other devices and apps. Most of what this technology does happens locally on the router, with a detection engine that analyzes what application is running and a policy engine that allocates however many kilobits or megabits per second the application needs. For example, the detection engine will sense that Netflix is playing a video at 1080p or some other resolution and apply the correct policy.

While detecting applications and applying policies happens on your router, there's an optional cloud component that uploads data about application usage to Qualcomm Atheros. The chipmaker wants to crowdsource information about the bandwidth usage of applications such as video streams and use that data to more accurately determine how much bandwidth each application needs.

The optimal policies for each application are then packaged into periodic firmware updates sent back to routers. People who sign up for the cloud service and contribute data will get the updated policies in automatic updates. Even those who want nothing to do with the cloud service can get the benefits by updating their router whenever they'd like.

Hardware partners D-Link and Alienware will show off routers using the service at the Consumer Electronics Show next week, and it should be available on shipping products in the spring. Opting in to the cloud service will require users to create an online account with an e-mail address and password. Qualcomm Atheros promises it will anonymize all data collected.

Nonetheless, it seems odd that one can't contribute to the crowdsourced database without creating an account with yet another username/password pair to remember. Dropping the account requirement might also boost adoption rates, thus making the crowdsourced data more accurate (or at least more extensive). In response to my questions, StreamBoost Director of Product Management Mike Cubbage said Qualcomm Atheros is open to allowing contributions without a cloud account, but as envisioned today the service will require a username and password.

How much traffic management do we really need?

So why this all this traffic management necessary, since the world is about to move on to Gigabit per second routers with the new 802.11ac standard? While you might have a gigabit flowing through your house, you still probably have anywhere from 1 to 100 megabits per second coming from your Internet provider. If you're on the low end, some video streams or online games can eat it up fairly quickly.

Cubbage says current routers are often good at prioritizing one application to make sure it has the bandwidth it needs but fail when it comes to managing many applications at once. He gives the example of YouTube only needing 4Mbps, yet asking the router for 20Mbps and getting it. "Applications ask for what they want, not what they need," he said. With services like Netflix, requirements also change fairly frequently by a half-megabit here and there, making it important to get the latest information to routers, he said. StreamBoost would also help make sure a voice call over Skype won't be affected by BitTorrent uploads and downloads.

If you are uploading usage data, not everything gets collected, and what does stays anonymous, Cubbage said. "From time to time we will take packet captures of streams that we have completely de-identified from the user and we'll basically bring those up to our cloud, do our crowdsourcing, and figure out what is happening in the world, and how should we make changes." The StreamBoost analysis servers are hosted in a third-party cloud service, likely the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud or something similar (Qualcomm declined to say exactly which one it's using).

"We are constantly monitoring and evaluating streams to see if 1: has any current stream changed, 2: are there new streams to identify, and 3: should we be changing policies. Has a certain stream changed the amount of bandwidth it needs," Cubbage said. "There's a monitoring of all that and the data collection, if you will, is done in the cloud. Once the cloud makes a decision, it goes back and updates the individual router, the table on the router to make sure that router is getting the latest and greatest information."

Updates won't be sent to the routers every day, and they will only happen when there's no network traffic to avoid disruption. The service is exclusive to Qualcomm Atheros, of course, so you can't get the benefits without using a StreamBoost-enabled router.

With the exception of the crowdsourcing, just about everything happens on the router itself rather than in the cloud. A router management interface lets users view all the devices on their network, the upload and download speeds available to each one, and the applications they're running, and make changes to prioritization. While you can access this anywhere in the world through a proxy using the StreamBoost cloud, the management tool can also be used locally without a cloud account.

StreamBoost isn't available yet, so we can't say how well it works or if users will notice a major improvement over current routers. Certainly, many users will prefer not to upload application usage data to Qualcomm Atheros because of privacy concerns, even if it's done in anonymized form. What's good here is the choice: you can skip the cloud service without losing any major functionality, and the benefits gained from crowdsourcing data will flow even to those who don't want their router constantly uploading data to the vendor that made it.

49 Reader Comments

The QOS functions of a home router will primarily only be effective on traffic you are sending. The congestion point being described in the article is the download path, from the carrier modem to the local router. I get that there are some with upload requirements that could benefit in the QOS realm, VOIP why trying to send a high volume of torrent traffic for instance. But these are not the kind of examples used in the article. Nothing you do on the local router will have the ISP/Carrier prioritize traffic out of their network toward your router. Now there could be some QOS taking place in the wireless realm, again for contention between clients where some prioritizing could come into play. But again that kind of example was not what was being discussed. Seems like something else may be going on here with the information they want to collect. Knowing I am getting a 4M media stream from netflix, will not help the router prioritize that traffic from the provider against the torrent traffic others in the house may be downloading.

The QOS functions of a home router will primarily only be effective on traffic you are sending. The congestion point being described in the article is the download path, from the carrier modem to the local router. I get that there are some with upload requirements that could benefit in the QOS realm, VOIP why trying to send a high volume of torrent traffic for instance. But these are not the kind of examples used in the article. Nothing you do on the local router will have the ISP/Carrier prioritize traffic out of their network toward your router. Now there could be some QOS taking place in the wireless realm, again for contention between clients where some prioritizing could come into play. But again that kind of example was not what was being discussed. Seems like something else may be going on here with the information they want to collect. Knowing I am getting a 4M media stream from netflix, will not help the router prioritize that traffic from the provider against the torrent traffic others in the house may be downloading.

True, they also analyze upload speeds, and make sure things like Skype get priority over BitTorrent. I should add something in on that to make it clear.

I've got lastpass to manage them, but avoid creating accounts willy nilly. More people with your info (they always require more than just username/pw to sign up) is more people to leak it. A shame, because otherwise I think I'd be okay with sharing anonymous usage data.

This reminds me of Naturally DragonSpeaking. Collecting data from volunteers for algorithm enhancement is great, but the real question is how much info do they glean? By having a login, it seems that they may track you. I can see how this could turn into a mess, imagine them working with Ad providers.

I suppose one could setup an account to contribute with a throw-away username/password with a one time email account. So long as you never have to access anything on their cloud (settings) or in an email they send out to be able to use the router as you want.

I can see this as a plus, if the router can make changes on the fly like VoIP > Netflix > BT. Then a new BT connection is created so it just divides the current BT bandwidth by the new # of BT connects while leaving the other services along. Then say a new Skype connection is made so it decreases the amount BT has while leaving Netflix alone, if possible, and keeping the current VoIP connection bandwidth steady. And finally someone starts watching a show on Hulu so the router keeps the VoIP/Skype bandwidth as is, decreases Netflix bandwidth, but only as much as it needs to, and may decrease BT's bandwidth unless it's at a level that would disrupt BT usage. At that point, it would look to shave a little more off Netflix before deciding if the VoIP/Skype bandwidth could be lowered.

I could be thinking the wrong way or just blowing smoke, hard to say with the current info. But if it works something like above and you can get the updates without creating an account. Well that would be a router worth the extra $ if you need that kind functionality.

I just want to know what I am consuming in terms of network resources. I want to know if the Roku in the living room is likely to blow my bandwidth cap out of the water. Conversely, it would be nice to know if everything else is "harmless".

I really couldn't care less about nonsense off in the cloud.

I want to be able to manage my ISP usage and avoid some unconscionable cable bill just because I decided to engage on an epic Dr Who marathon.

I don't use any cloud service for my data. I am the one responsible for protecting the privacy and security of my data & information. Using any cloud service puts that at the mercy of ever changing ToS.

And then there's the fact that I have no control over who physically accesses the system. How in depth are the background checks made on employees of the cloud service? And how about outsourced services, such as cleaning?

Now add to that the fact that the bigger the system the bigger the hacker target and you have a situation ripe for abuse.

Another thing. How easily will the company cave in to demands from government to snoop the data?

This sounds surprisingly sanely put together. It's even opt-in! Unknowing users won't even be sending any data without realizing it. Hearing that at least one company is actually being reasonable when it comes to potentially sensitive customer data and information is great to hear.

ISP's have been working on bandwidth priotiry issues for years now, so it seems a bit odd to even require it at a second point. I do understand the need for setting usage appropriate limits but it should be the service that is doing that (correctly).

The QOS functions of a home router will primarily only be effective on traffic you are sending. The congestion point being described in the article is the download path, from the carrier modem to the local router. I get that there are some with upload requirements that could benefit in the QOS realm, VOIP why trying to send a high volume of torrent traffic for instance. But these are not the kind of examples used in the article. Nothing you do on the local router will have the ISP/Carrier prioritize traffic out of their network toward your router.

None of the routers in the Internet know about congestion points. The TCP/IP protocol is designed to adapt to traffic congestion based on how fast packets are actually arriving and if they arrive at all.

You get surprisingly good results by doing one-way QoS on a local router. I know because I used to run my own Linux router on a 144 Kbps IDSL line and later a 1.5 Mbps T1. (Now that I have 20 Mbps cable I find I don't need QoS at all.) I implemented my QoS as an outgoing queue on the internal Ethernet interface. I find this gives much better results than doing a police drop on the incoming interface. I had it set up to do RED with ECN and I did the queue sizing based on advice from the buffer-bloat project. I only hit the worst latencies when a new high priority stream appeared while a large incoming download was in progress. Because the transmit window had opened up so much, the incoming stream was stuffed and it takes time (over a second in some of my observed cases) for the ISP buffers to clear out. After that the transmit window closed pretty quickly and the high priority stream was in good shape after 5 or 6 seconds.

Of course for best results such as flawless VOIP you need the routers on both sides to do QoS.

The QOS functions of a home router will primarily only be effective on traffic you are sending. The congestion point being described in the article is the download path, from the carrier modem to the local router. I get that there are some with upload requirements that could benefit in the QOS realm, VOIP why trying to send a high volume of torrent traffic for instance. But these are not the kind of examples used in the article. Nothing you do on the local router will have the ISP/Carrier prioritize traffic out of their network toward your router. Now there could be some QOS taking place in the wireless realm, again for contention between clients where some prioritizing could come into play. But again that kind of example was not what was being discussed. Seems like something else may be going on here with the information they want to collect. Knowing I am getting a 4M media stream from netflix, will not help the router prioritize that traffic from the provider against the torrent traffic others in the house may be downloading.

True, they also analyze upload speeds, and make sure things like Skype get priority over BitTorrent. I should add something in on that to make it clear.

So you're agreeing that the router will have little if any benefit for users whose traffic consists almost entirely of receiving. O:-)

The QOS functions of a home router will primarily only be effective on traffic you are sending. The congestion point being described in the article is the download path, from the carrier modem to the local router. I get that there are some with upload requirements that could benefit in the QOS realm, VOIP why trying to send a high volume of torrent traffic for instance. But these are not the kind of examples used in the article. Nothing you do on the local router will have the ISP/Carrier prioritize traffic out of their network toward your router. Now there could be some QOS taking place in the wireless realm, again for contention between clients where some prioritizing could come into play. But again that kind of example was not what was being discussed. Seems like something else may be going on here with the information they want to collect. Knowing I am getting a 4M media stream from netflix, will not help the router prioritize that traffic from the provider against the torrent traffic others in the house may be downloading.

True, they also analyze upload speeds, and make sure things like Skype get priority over BitTorrent. I should add something in on that to make it clear.

So you're agreeing that the router will have little if any benefit for users whose traffic consists almost entirely of receiving. O:-)

"Also" is the key word in that sentence. It implies that more than one thing can be true.

The QOS functions of a home router will primarily only be effective on traffic you are sending. The congestion point being described in the article is the download path, from the carrier modem to the local router. I get that there are some with upload requirements that could benefit in the QOS realm, VOIP why trying to send a high volume of torrent traffic for instance. But these are not the kind of examples used in the article. Nothing you do on the local router will have the ISP/Carrier prioritize traffic out of their network toward your router. Now there could be some QOS taking place in the wireless realm, again for contention between clients where some prioritizing could come into play. But again that kind of example was not what was being discussed. Seems like something else may be going on here with the information they want to collect. Knowing I am getting a 4M media stream from netflix, will not help the router prioritize that traffic from the provider against the torrent traffic others in the house may be downloading.

True, they also analyze upload speeds, and make sure things like Skype get priority over BitTorrent. I should add something in on that to make it clear.

So you're agreeing that the router will have little if any benefit for users whose traffic consists almost entirely of receiving. O:-)

"Also" is the key word in that sentence. It implies that more than one thing can be true.

But the original poster you replied to made the point that incoming traffic will receive little benefit. I'm confused whether you agree or disagree with that specific point. Since you addressed only his secondary assertion that upload only could receive some benefit, the omission leaves some forgivable confusion over what you think of his main assertion. Surely this router wouldn't be marketed as the latest whiz-bang gizmo if the cloud-based QOS couldn't really impact incoming traffic.

The QOS functions of a home router will primarily only be effective on traffic you are sending. The congestion point being described in the article is the download path, from the carrier modem to the local router. I get that there are some with upload requirements that could benefit in the QOS realm, VOIP why trying to send a high volume of torrent traffic for instance. But these are not the kind of examples used in the article. Nothing you do on the local router will have the ISP/Carrier prioritize traffic out of their network toward your router. Now there could be some QOS taking place in the wireless realm, again for contention between clients where some prioritizing could come into play. But again that kind of example was not what was being discussed. Seems like something else may be going on here with the information they want to collect. Knowing I am getting a 4M media stream from netflix, will not help the router prioritize that traffic from the provider against the torrent traffic others in the house may be downloading.

The *receiver* of the traffic tells the sender via the TCP window how much data they can receive. So, having the router manipulate the window to give priority to Youtube vs Facebook or MS Updates, for example.

Yes, the sender is also potentially constrained by bandwidth, but if we are talking about traffic between a cloud service like Youtube or Netflix that is load-balanced in many different ways and can saturate most broadband connections (assuming the datastream itself has a high enough bitrate), then sender bandwidth is not an issue. So, this can work quite well to help busy connections.

My concern is that router hardware has limited processing and memory, so there will be a limit on the table/ruleset size before it itself impacts performance. I have no idea what the practical limit is for home-grade routers maybe, and one powered by a cell-phone level ARM chip can probably handle even high bandwidth connections with largish rulesets. Of course a campus or datacenter level pieces of equipment, or even a modern Linux server acting as a router can handle rulesets in the 100's of thousands of rules while processing 100+ mbps. (The real fact is packets per second, not bandwidth, but for simplicity, I equate the two.)

Some time ago my old home router finally gave up. After looking at the prices of new routers that play well with different kinds of devices and are decently configurable I opted out and bought cheap (~$20) wifi card that has open source Linux drivers for my Linux box that serves as my local NAS server.

I have to say that the initial configuration of the old/new "router" took some time, mostly because of lack of official documentation or the overabundance of it, but after that I got the best router that I have ever used. And it didn't cost an arm and a leg.

This QoS thingy makes sense, but until someone actually thoroughly investigates it it will remain in the realms of marketing ploys.

All there is to say Bufferbloat and CeroWrt does not need any Stream Management and data grabbing. This is all marketing fluff to be sexy (cloud) or cover up the real intentions (and even if they are not nefarious now, sooner or later they will be).

I agree with the author. The vast majority of cloud-forcing products today are pure trash that mostly provide slower service than something done locally. Worse, when crapware is burned onto hardware, it's a lot harder to remove than when crapware was installed on O/S desktops which at least provided a convenient way to uninstall or delete the offensive bloatware sucking up valuable resources, CPU cycles, bandwidth, and so on.

I can't even buy a printer these days without some idiotic menu option that ties into a cloud service which I could care less about. Even when the service is somewhat useful, I nearly always would prefer a local solution rather than some crap cloud umbilical cord.

As a result I have a lot of hardware that have menu option space that's completely wasted ... which really bugs me. Instead of hardware appliances becoming more streamlined, they are becoming more cumbersome and irritating to use.

Instead their cloud services decide the QOS in your internal network? Why everyone tries to have something cloud in order to be popular?

Instead they should make a better QOS management, so every newbie can select which application has priority in their local network. Instead of making a better local interface for a device which is supposed to manage how local data is prioritized on your local LAN they mix it with some cloud service which is not local for something that is supposed to work locally. They just love to complicate things just in order to have something "cloud" in their product.

I don´t understand why companies are so obsessed in taking more control away from the user, instead of just improving what exists for years. Most routers and home modems have this already built in, but its complicated for the average Joe that does not know which protocol and port every application uses. Instead of making this easier they decide its better if they manage this on behalf of the user. I would never buy any device that decides to make things more complicated. Not only would this not work for me, but this is just plain stupid. Nothing than marketing, just like most of this software that advertises making your computer faster, they end up doing exactly the opposite.

I don´t have a problem if the router lets you download a list of the most used apps for easy QOS management, but sending the traffic you use, in order for them to make a list and decide which is more important makes me feel that they think their customers are all idiots and they need to take control on their routers. Lets the user and consumer decide what they want. Some may like Youtube over Skype first, and some other could decide browsing is even more important than VOIP. I don´t see how this boxed model can fit everyone, each users has different needs, and this is why local QOS needs to be done locally, by the user to fit his needs. Lets learn from what Cisco did, they decided to put the local management interface on the cloud !!!! I cannot possible imagine how a company with that reputation even came up with something that stupid.

Why don´t we just put everything in the cloud, even airport controllers!!!! They assume the cloud is just amazing and everything works so perfectly and not everything is designed to live on the net all the time. I just hate this products that require Internet for everything, there are just allot of situations where Internet is off limits, like for people that travel on airports and planes to mention just one example. Internet is great, but if you make even all your hardware depend on the Internet to work you are basically making your products worst, because now vs working online and offline, companies are making online alone products. So the product is now inferior. If this cloud decease keeps on, tomorrow we are not going to be able to make a simple coffee without internet because the coffee machine will decide it can only work online in order to send data about how much cups you are preparing.

ISP's have been working on bandwidth priotiry issues for years now, so it seems a bit odd to even require it at a second point. I do understand the need for setting usage appropriate limits but it should be the service that is doing that (correctly).

I think I'd rather have some control of my bandwidth usage than leave it all in my provider's hands. Moving traffic shaping to the client could be a good thing. COULD be. If it became popular enough and proved to be effective, would ISPs then back down on their style of traffic management, which includes DPI, throttling, capping, overage billing and so on? Well, okay, let's call that a pipe dream. Maybe five to ten years ago, this sort of plan could have had that effect. Still some advantages to it, though, if only in avoidance of provider surprise attacks.

In response to my questions, StreamBoost Director of Product Management Mike Cubbage said Qualcomm Atheros is open to allowing contributions without a cloud account, but as envisioned today the service will require a username and password.

This is a non-answer. You should have pressed him to ATFQ (answer the question) - why is an account required?

I bought a Cisco Linksys router several months ago and I had complete control, one day I logged in to change some settings and found out I needed to create a cloud account to make basic changes.There is no way I'm going to allow remote access to my router, if Cisco gets compromised and hackers get my username and password it leaves my network open to attacks.Needless to say its in a pile of equipment to get recycled. I know there is a way to roll it back but that's not the point.

I bought a Cisco Linksys router several months ago and I had complete control, one day I logged in to change some settings and found out I needed to create a cloud account to make basic changes.There is no way I'm going to allow remote access to my router, if Cisco gets compromised and hackers get my username and password it leaves my network open to attacks.Needless to say its in a pile of equipment to get recycled. I know there is a way to roll it back but that's not the point.

We're a bit off-topic here, but there was a very easy (but less than obvious, of course) way to opt out of that and treat it like a normal router, with HTTP-based admin panels and so on - no cloud attached. During first-time setup there IS a link to it. Search for the specific model number and "setup" and I'm sure you can find instructions on the 'Net. (I'm not including the details because I'd have to reset a router to get there.)

Edit: sorry if that falls in the "that's not the point" bucket. My point is that they did have the good sense to allow opt-out.

I bought a Cisco Linksys router several months ago and I had complete control, one day I logged in to change some settings and found out I needed to create a cloud account to make basic changes.There is no way I'm going to allow remote access to my router, if Cisco gets compromised and hackers get my username and password it leaves my network open to attacks.Needless to say its in a pile of equipment to get recycled. I know there is a way to roll it back but that's not the point.

I bought a Cisco Linksys router several months ago and I had complete control, one day I logged in to change some settings and found out I needed to create a cloud account to make basic changes.There is no way I'm going to allow remote access to my router, if Cisco gets compromised and hackers get my username and password it leaves my network open to attacks.Needless to say its in a pile of equipment to get recycled. I know there is a way to roll it back but that's not the point.

I bought a Cisco Linksys router several months ago and I had complete control, one day I logged in to change some settings and found out I needed to create a cloud account to make basic changes.There is no way I'm going to allow remote access to my router, if Cisco gets compromised and hackers get my username and password it leaves my network open to attacks.Needless to say its in a pile of equipment to get recycled. I know there is a way to roll it back but that's not the point.

That implies that they've changed things ... ??? I have both an E3200 and an E4200 and was able to just click through to the standard, local admin panels, without rolling back to older or alternate firmware. Both were purchased within the last year, the E4200 only a few months ago.

The QOS functions of a home router will primarily only be effective on traffic you are sending. The congestion point being described in the article is the download path, from the carrier modem to the local router. I get that there are some with upload requirements that could benefit in the QOS realm, VOIP why trying to send a high volume of torrent traffic for instance. But these are not the kind of examples used in the article. Nothing you do on the local router will have the ISP/Carrier prioritize traffic out of their network toward your router. Now there could be some QOS taking place in the wireless realm, again for contention between clients where some prioritizing could come into play. But again that kind of example was not what was being discussed. Seems like something else may be going on here with the information they want to collect. Knowing I am getting a 4M media stream from netflix, will not help the router prioritize that traffic from the provider against the torrent traffic others in the house may be downloading.

The *receiver* of the traffic tells the sender via the TCP window how much data they can receive. So, having the router manipulate the window to give priority to Youtube vs Facebook or MS Updates, for example.

Yes, the sender is also potentially constrained by bandwidth, but if we are talking about traffic between a cloud service like Youtube or Netflix that is load-balanced in many different ways and can saturate most broadband connections (assuming the datastream itself has a high enough bitrate), then sender bandwidth is not an issue. So, this can work quite well to help busy connections.

My concern is that router hardware has limited processing and memory, so there will be a limit on the table/ruleset size before it itself impacts performance. I have no idea what the practical limit is for home-grade routers maybe, and one powered by a cell-phone level ARM chip can probably handle even high bandwidth connections with largish rulesets. Of course a campus or datacenter level pieces of equipment, or even a modern Linux server acting as a router can handle rulesets in the 100's of thousands of rules while processing 100+ mbps. (The real fact is packets per second, not bandwidth, but for simplicity, I equate the two.)

All SOHO routers have acted as limited firewalls for some time thus TCP Window Size juggling to provide a means for controlling inbound QoS is feasible provided the devices have enough horsepower. As you eloquently pointed out, cell phones have powerful processors these days although I am unaware of what price point that would put said router into.

I see a couple of challenges related to this approach:1.) How does the router probe the internet link for bandwidth capabilities? In the enterprise world a circuit terminates into a specialized port which through protocol negotiation enables the router to know the upload/outbound speed of the link. This is simply not feasible for a SOHO device.

2.) With that point aside, how does the device determine download/inbound speed to perform TCP Window Size juggling within? The easiest way would be a speed test but that opens up a few points for error: a) If the internet is congested and a sub-par reading is performed then the user suffers from a decreased level of service. b) It would have to re-sample periodically to detect changes in bandwidth such as a faulty DSL line that occasionally retrains. Without this information the TCP Window Size juggling feature would not work and with incorrect information the user experience gets worse.

3.) For this microflow shaping feature to work the device is also acting as a Deep Packet Inspection device. I am a fan of IPS' in high security environments, but there is a trade off that false positives do happen. On one hand, I see this feature being the exact reason they want to tie people into a cloud-based service: DPI engine updates. If this is the reason then the username/password requirement makes sense. No doubt proprietary information is found in these updates and the EULA prevents corporate espionage. My fear would be the all too common false-positives causing a noticeably degraded level of service for their customer who would most likely call their ISP, or in a worst-case scenario, bricking a router with an on-the-fly update.

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of outbound QoS even if you can not control inbound QoS. I like where their heads are with putting the improved user experience possible with the correct application of QoS within reach of the masses but I do not believe this is the winning solution yet.

This is indeed how it should be done! Optional Opt-In services that actually improve things!

I could see myself looking at a device with this service next time I need to buy a new router, the speed management looks very attractive to me, the number of 'net capable devices in my house has exploded since I got my last router, between tablets, PCs, laptops, and things like the 360, it can be a right pain at times making sure someone doesn't hog the entire connection (only 8mb here... can not wait until the NBN rolls out...) by accident.

I bought a Cisco Linksys router several months ago and I had complete control, one day I logged in to change some settings and found out I needed to create a cloud account to make basic changes.There is no way I'm going to allow remote access to my router, if Cisco gets compromised and hackers get my username and password it leaves my network open to attacks.Needless to say its in a pile of equipment to get recycled. I know there is a way to roll it back but that's not the point.

We're a bit off-topic here, but there was a very easy (but less than obvious, of course) way to opt out of that and treat it like a normal router, with HTTP-based admin panels and so on - no cloud attached. During first-time setup there IS a link to it. Search for the specific model number and "setup" and I'm sure you can find instructions on the 'Net. (I'm not including the details because I'd have to reset a router to get there.)

Edit: sorry if that falls in the "that's not the point" bucket. My point is that they did have the good sense to allow opt-out.

I am of the same mind as Zykur. Cisco/Linksys, without asking permission, changed his hardware in a way that forced him to create a "cloud" account. Regardless of whether or not they provided an opt-out mechanism, this is unacceptable behaviour from any vendor. Cisco had already made it onto my "never do business with again" list for previous transgressions. This just moved them into the "not even if they give it to me for free" category.

Ah Qualcomm-Atheros, company making the worst wireless drivers ever. Just another good reason not to want their products in your home.

How do you anonymize packet capture? Seriously?

- Will you wipe out the IP and MAC addresses in the header before sending it to the cloud?- What if a packet contains plain text data such as pieces of email messages which sometimes contain sensitive info like you know, activation links, passwords, purchase receipts?

Moreover, what is it to them to know what applications people use? How can they improve prioritization by crowdsourcing? Does it mean I will have horrible ping on game servers because more people watch youtube and netflix than they play games?

Finally, if their packet capture and periodical sending of data to the cloud is not going to be out-of-band, then such a router might actually worsen your link reliability by using part of it (without your knowledge as of when and how much) for its stupid gimmick.